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There’s An Easy And Expensive Way To Compare Text Documents On Your Mac

All too often a strange thing happens with Mac users who work on documents all day long. Revisions get out of order.

That’s especially true when two or more people work on the same document, or even different parts of a document. Microsoft Word has built-in version management but for everyone else in the Mac word, comparing two documents to see what’s changed or different in each is a chore. A manual, line-by-line chore.

If computers are so smart then how come a Mac cannot tell which documents are different, and where they’re different? For that you need an app like DocumentCompare, now under evaluation in our office.

What this useful app does is what you expect. Side-by-side on the Mac’s screen you’ll see the contents of two documents, and highlights where the document text is the same and a different highlight where the text is different.

The smallest of changes or differences between documents are quickly and easily found in DocumentCompare.

Text formatting within the document is maintained during the comparison process so font sizes and styles and basic formatting is preserved.

One handy function is that DocumentCompare uses the Mac’s built-in text engine, so whatever text can be displayed in TextEdit, including Numbers spreadsheet tables, can be compared.

DocumentCompare is not inexpensive, and it’s not an app you’re likely to use everyday, but it can pay for itself in just a few uses by quickly highlighting differences between two documents with nothing more than a click.